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04 Mar 2015 12:24:27pm

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Hi Ockham,I too think Hitchens is wrong about free will but not as wrong as you and with a better sense of humour.You have some serious deficiencies in understanding.Firstly, you write of arguments that are "logically valid with true premises". Children learn. Human concepts have profoundly transformed even just in historical times. Knowledge is acquired. Meanings change. At no point in human history (or in an individual's learning) can understanding be stated in terms of true premises. Knowledge is not acquired by deduction from true (dogmatic) premises. We don't discover logically, rather we try to organize our knowledge logically.I am guessing that you conceive of a complete body of perfect knowledge (which you assume can be organised logically from a finite number of premises) and imagine that you yourself are privy to a small parcel of it. My view is that there is no basis for taking this ideal view of knowledge seriously. Consequently I would guess that we have a different view of what it means to say something is true. You conceive of it as an ultimate judgement as to whether an assertion belongs to the body of perfect knowledge. I conceive of it as a revisable and more modest judgement - it is the best we can do at the moment. I say scientific theories are true whereas you agonise over the problem.Hume's skepticism is derived from his notion of perception - it is the recognition that when we perceive objects we are not presented with the object itself but rather with some indication of the object. As the mechanisms of perception have become better understood this viewpoint and its sceptical consequences has been vindicated. We can and do identify things very effectively but we are not, in principle, able to identify anything perfectly. Consequently your notions of truth and logic and a perfect body of knowledge, as it relates to the real, are without foundation. Thought/imagination is also perceived. This usage (of 'perceived') seems well justified. The mechanisms of this kind of perception are being unfolded. Furthermore, sophisticated and efficient perception of the real by a mature perceiver is about small amounts of input triggering a pre-conceived (previously perceived) real. This suggests that human perception, including the perception of thought, imagination and emotion, is entirely about the real. There is no perfect identity, no perfect language, no perfect knowledge anywhere (not even in logic and mathematics). To use a metaphor from mathematics - our demonstrable finite certainties do not argue for infinite certainties.